Jon Letendre

Rand wrote about goats: "We climbed paths where the wild goat dared not follow." Extra honor-system points if you can remember which book, without Googling.

Jon: ""The empty set of gas in the tank" isn't pretty rendered in plain english." George: [Pretties the english] I see nothing wrong with the prettification. I repeat, "It's no problem for logic, no problem for the software running the gauge." I can freeze the software and examine its value states. The set of gas it keeps track of has not devolved to nonsense or falsity, it simply has a zero current value. As you and Roger have it, the software would have to answer: "There is no such set. I cannot answer questions about non-existent sets." But it doesn't do that. It answers, "I have been keeping tabs on that set, and presently its value is precisely: zero."

George, I agree on the need to avoid reifying nothingness. The gauge on my dash successfully avoids such reification, yet it never stops measuring the set of gas in the tank. The algorithms running the gauge constantly track the set of gas in the tank. They don't get trapped in a vicious loop owing to the nonsensicality of measuring non-existent gas, as Roger would have it. Peek inside the software and examine the values it is holding and you will find that it has a value for the set of gas in the tank: "E." Not, "nonsense." Not, "reification error." As you said, "[empty sets] may serve a purpose in logic and mathematics." "The empty set of gas in the tank" isn't pretty rendered in plain english, but it's no problem for logic, no problem for the software running the gauge. It's not nonsense.

I drive 300 miles until my truck stops. Can we describe the set of gas in my tank? Seems your reasoning would disallow even talking about the set of gas in the tank since there is "no set of ~any~ kind" in the tank. But we can't not talk about the gas in the tank, because when we say, "it's empty," we're talking about: gas in the tank.

Roger, "2. A china cabinet is not a set of ~any~ kind. If a china cabinet is empty, it's empty of anything and everything that might fit inside it. By your reasoning, then, an empty china cabinet would also be an empty set of marbles, an empty set of copies of Atlas Shrugged, an empty set of hands with seven fingers, etc." Correct. Except that it is also empty of things that might NOT fit inside it, so it's more empty than you are allowing.

Can you detect from this I wrote: "I don't like that the empty set is a subset of every set, just as I don't like that X raised to the power zero is one. However, the truth of both is required to preserve the total logic of a system. Denial that X raised to the power zero equals one leads to contradiction, so that's that." …that I agree with you that the empty set is a subset of every set? Do you find an error in my quote, above? If yes, what is the error?

You write, "A set A is NOT a subset of set B if there exists an element x which is in A but not in B. So if the empty set O is not a subset of set B, then there is an element in O which is not in B." Maybe I am missing something, but isn't the above like this: T if G Therefore, if T then G I don't recall the name, but isn't that invalid? And, you quote from my post but then your reply seems unresponsive to and uncorrective of anything in my quote. Do you find an error in what you quoted from me? What is it? "There was a sign at the entrance to Plato's Academy way back when in Athens. It said "Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter through this gate" Would you be able to enter Plato's Academy if it were still around?" I don't know. Fuck off, in any case.

I don't like that the empty set is a subset of every set, just as I don't like that X raised to the power zero is one. However, the truth of both is required to preserve the total logic of a system. Denial that X raised to the power zero equals one leads to contradiction, so that's that. Likewise for the empty set. The subsets of {a1,a2} can be confirmed by checking the unions: {a1, a2} U {a1, a2} = {a1, a2} {a1, a2} U {a1} = {a1, a2} {a1, a2} U {a2} = {a1, a2} {a1, a2} U { } = {a1, a2} Therefore, all four ( {a1, a2}, {a1}, {a2} and { } ) are subsets of {a1, a2}. It isn't pretty, but it appears unavoidable. I don't see anything wrong with saying, "It's an empty set of china." An empty china cabinet IS an empty set of china.

Hi Michael, Many customers feel guilty, they seem to imagine that if they met one of the workers they would be told: “Please stop buying Apple products. Demand for those products is the cause of my misery in a sweatshop,” when really they would be told: “Please don’t stop buying the products!” Without this job it’s back to the countryside for me, or to work in a real sweatshop instead of here, pressing chips into place and snapping cases together.” It’s not the fault of Apple, Foxconn or Apple customers that Chinese workers have meager options compared to Americans. No, that’s Marx’s fault, Mao’s fault. Buying their goods is part of the solution for them, not the problem. As more capital gets invested, productivity of labor will rise and wages with it, as they have been, dramatically, and without unions. Apple customers of the world! Stop buying the leftist crap and confusions! You have nothing but your silly, unearned guilt to lose!

Lifespan can be twenty years and there still is no problem. Not sure what part of this you are not getting. No one is saying the individuals who set out will get anywhere special other than closer. Descendents will get there. And I think plenty of people would want to go, things don’t have to get bad here on earth. Lots of people don’t leave their city for years, wouldn’t mind never leaving it. If the craft is the size of a city, they wouldn’t even notice a difference.

Yes, ten lifetimes, wow. The Asians who discovered the Americas took many times that to move throughout. So what? They lost all contact with anyone they may have known back in Asia. So?

Lifespan is not a problem. It was much shorter 30 or 50 thousand years ago when people walked across ice from Asia into North America. Life was too short for any one person to see much of the Americas, but that didn’t stop descendants from populating the whole place, right down to the bottom of Chile.

Since a person owns herself, so she also owns her labor. She can sell some of it, or none of it—that’s a basic human right. It is why slavery is wrong—it forces labor from her, whether remunerated, or not. The issue is her consent. If her consent is present, it can’t be slavery. Imagine a man whittling little wooden sculptures. He does it all day long, because he likes to and he sells the sculptures to buy food. He doesn’t like hunger, so he whittles. Now along comes an American leftie asking how many hours he whittles per day. Fourteen. The American leftie asks why he works so much. The man explains why but the leftie seems not to understand, stays fixated on the inhumanely long hours, and walks away determined to get a law passed to prevent such long hours, which, in his deeply confused mind constitute slavery. Now the whittler is in prison for violating a “fair and humane labor law.” Two days ago, NPR did some follow-up on their fairytale story about working conditions in Apple’s contractor’s factories. A lady, a Chinese labor market expert, reported that workers can and do quit and switch jobs often (consent.) This morning NPR did more follow-up: Apple paid for an independent audit of conditions and the major problem discovered is the long working hours. In the same report, one third of the thousands of workers interviewed said their top complaint is: they want more hours. A legal limit on their work hours — hours they consent to and want to work — is a clear violation of their human rights, as plain and clear as slavery and the imprisonment of the whittler.

First is overrated and reflected images will only confuse her. My method is the most elegant.

In that case, she’ll need to cover 4 E-W miles in her 3 miles of N-S travel. Or, 1 1/3 E-W per one mile of N-S travel. Getting to the river is one N-S mile of travel, and if she’ll need to cover 1 1/3 E-W miles in that one mile of N-S travel, then she’ll land at 1 1/3, 0.

“The more obvious way to solve this problem uses calculus. However, with a few moments' reflection , it could be solved without calculus. What method would that be?” There are three N-S miles to cover and three E-W miles to cover, so all travel should be equal parts N-S and E-W, i.e., at 45 degree angles, which gives a landing at the river at 1,0, (or, since there's no reason to assume the cow is at x=0, she'll land at c+1,0.)

Right, 1, not more than 1 like I said. At 1, it’s a 90 degree turn left to the barn.

The other method is intuition, and mine tells me she should shoot for that spot on the river where it is a 90 degree left turn to the barn. X would be about 1.2.

I love: Journey Through Genius William Dunham

Michael, I misremembered your admission as coming in the discussion—you actually presented it in the opening article. I was wrong about that. The sentence that introduces your telling of having learned that global warming was about the atmosphere: “Another very pleasant surprise was the basic science lesson I received from this film.” [An Inconvenient truth.] So you found out that global warming refers to atmospheric and not whole-earth warming by watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I thought you still didn’t know even after seeing the film. Sorry. My point is not much changed by this, however. WSS seems to see what I’m getting at. Why not let your defenses down and consider that we criticize you on this point because we care about you? What’s with all the ‘trying to control you’ and ‘win a debate’? Please consider that it may just be constructive criticism. However, if you think it wise to get into debates with well-prepared people about global warming when you only just then* learned what it’s actually about, then by all means ignore what I’ve said and knock yourself out. * Sad but true, I expect a challenge on this. The article begins, “I have just seen” [An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle.]

Michael writes, “Whatever my words were, I have never believed something like the earth becoming a ball of fire like the sun (as your words suggest) and I never intended that meaning.” I don’t recall claiming you suggested an earth that is a ball-of-fire. I don't think my words have suggested that. I claimed that you admitted to understanding global warming as about earth-warming, as opposed to atmospheric warming. And this really is what you thought, only about a year ago, and after submitting many opinions about the global warming debate.

Ellen, Please continue posting as much as possible. Michael, I think you wrote it. I think you admitted, at the start of your inquiry into global warming, (but not before much opinion-spouting on the subject) that you had just then learned that global warming was about the warming of the AIR about the earth, not about warming of the earth itself. If I am wrong…no, I’m sure that’s what you said. You are the hag.

Old hag? You suck old motor oil, Michael. Ellen is the reason I read this site. Even if she were in a wheelchair, I would still want to park my... ...thoughts and dreams beside her. No, you don't really suck. But you keep getting in it with Roger and Ellen, for example—on subjects where you just don't know what the frick you're doin'. They've pleaded with you. It's not a big deal. Just slow down. Think about what you want to say. Don't say too much. Don't talk about global warming if you don't realize it's about air temp and not under-ground temp., for example. Maybe you're an artist who should step away and let what happens happen.

Ellen, You write, “So then what could have possessed Leonard Peikoff? Maybe he really was trying to pay AR back.” No, I’m sure that’s not it. Peikoff was blinded by the same longing that animates today’s admirers of PARC…he and they want their HERO back. (No, their PERFECT hero.) From My Thirty Years With Ayn Rand: BOLD was italic in original. [My comments] “Ladies and Gentlemen: in my judgment, Ayn Rand did live her philosophy. Whatever her errors, she practiced what she preached, both epistemologically and morally. As a result, she did achieve in her life that which she set out to achieve; she achieved it intellectually, artistically, emotionally. But for you to judge these matters yourself and reach an objective view of Ayn Rand, you must be an unusually philosophical kind of person, [you want to be that, right? Then listen carefully] because you are living in a Kantian, anti-value culture, and you are going to be offered some very opposite accounts of the facts of her life. So you have to know: what IS objectivity? What sort of testimony qualifies as evidence in this context? What do YOU believe is possible to a man—or a woman? What kind of soul do YOU think it takes to write Atlas Shrugged? And what do you WANT to see in a historic figure? [We were just told to be wary of Kantianism, and now—Objectivist shunning of whims, wishes and wants be damned—we are invited to ponder what we WANT to see in a historic figure???] “I am not a Kantian. I do not believe that we can know Ayn Rand only as she appeared to somebody or other. But if I were to grant that premise for a split second, if I were to agree that we all construe reality according to our own personal preferences, then I would still draw a fundamental moral distinction between two kinds of preferences: between those of the muckrakers and those of the hero-worshippers. It is the distinction between the people who, confronted by a genius, are seized with a passion to ferret out flaws, real or imaginary, i.e., to find feet of clay so as to justify their own blighted lives—as against the people who, desperate to feel admiration, want to dismiss any flaw as trivial because nothing matters to them in such a context but the sight of the human greatness that inspires and awes them. In this kind of clash, I am sure, you recognize where I stand.” “Desperate to feel admiration.” They surely know that Rand was not perfect and that PARC is quite far from perfect, but when one is fixated on what one WANTS to see, and when one is desperate to feel admiration…

Ellen, The web presentation was horrendous. Of PARC I’ve read only what Valliant has posted at SoloP. The web edition absolutely was not any better than what has been posted. You wondered if Peikoff had seen something more reasonable or in any way of a higher quality when he read the web version. Sorry, no. Funny aside: According to Jim, I am responsible for improvements of the web edition itself! After reading it, I emailed he and Casey my frank thoughts, which I summed-up with a comment along the lines of “and you fucknuts imagine that you are doing her legacy a favor with this?” We exchanged a few times and then he wrote that my comments (I pointed out several specific problems) were very helpful, he has made changes in response to them, and he would like to name me in the credits! I declined and stopped “helping.” It was also at this time that I learned from Jim that many people believe that N. Branden murdered his wife Patrecia. But that he didn’t believe it himself. Isn’t that precious?